Friday, October 24, 2008

Bird Eating Spiders and and Particle Physics - Wicked Awesome


First, the wicked - an unlucky Chestnut-breasted Mannikin gets snared in the web of an abnormally large golden orb spider, which looks like something out of Starship Troopers.
What happens next is more or less undocumented, as the spider wrestles and then devours the bird, all caught on camera by an Australian retiree whose backyard hosted this scene of pure badassery. You can see a gallery of the rest of the pictures here.

Now, the awesome. I had forgotten all about this until a friend brought it up again at work, and reminded me that it is probably the coolest thing I've ever seen. Everything a layman needs to know about particle physics, dark matter, how the Large Hadron Collider works (when it works) and what it's for, nestled in the warm bosom of five minutes of astonishingly good rap.
Enjoy.

Hell Hath No Fury...

Like a woman digitally scorned. Or at least like this Japanese woman, who, following her divorce in the strange and precocious online world of Maple Story, used her former in-game heartthrob's password to send his avatar to the cornfield.

This is why your MMO load screen always tells you never to give out your account information. Because online, spurned lovers can blink you right out of existence, which one would have to assume they can't do in real life, being that I am still here.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Drugs Are Bad - And So Are Fish, Probably

Dispatches from the realm of "Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't" - quitting smoking is now officially hazardous to your health. With deaths and drug reactions reaching an all time quarterly high, Pfizer's stop smoking aid Chantix led the pack, with more than a 1,000 incidents attributed to it, including vivid dreams, mood swings, blackouts and traffic accidents. Chantix, which works by blocking the pleasurable effects of nicotine from reaching a smoker's brain has also been linked to suicide attempts and depression, which Pfizer executives have been eager to pass off as symptoms of smoking withdrawal, rather than fairly routine side effects of a drug that keeps pleasure from entering your brain.

Also now bad for you - Chilean farmed salmon, which recently tested positive for crystal violet, and anti fungal agent that has been tenatively linked to... drumroll please ... bladder cancer!

But more dangerous and also cooler than both the smoking and fish living their entire life spans coralled in filthy, infected tropical waters is the Bloodhound SSC, the plans for which were presented today at London's Science Museum. If all goes right, this rocket car, powered by a jet engine, will reach speeds upwards of 1,000 miles per hour, breaking the world land speed record and setting a new bar for the very conept of awesome.

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

ExoMars Takes a Staycation

While India's first lunar probe zips through the stratosphere toward glory, the European Space Agency's ExoMars Rover will look on jealously from the ground, which is where it will be for at least the next eight years after the mission, scheduled for 2013, was pushed back three more years. The reason behind this latest postponement is the same behind the recent dulling of ambitious projects worldwide - money, money, money.

Since it's inception as a simple, bare bones mission to the Red Planet, the ExoMars Rover has been run through a space version of Pimp My Ride, acquiring advanced labarotory capabilities to analyze the martian environment, as well as a drill to take deeper core samples. All these bells and whistles have caused the cost of the project to balloon from an initial estimate of 650 million euros to 1.2 billion euros as of today. Italy, who has taken the lead on financing the project, has cried uncle, and since no other nation has ponied up to help the ExoMars Rover liftoff, the rover is in a holding pattern for now.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Hitler Bad, Stalin... Good?


I don't know how this came up last night, (though I'd wager it had something to do with whiskey) but I still feel pretty strongly that it's a topic that merits discussion. In the wake of WWII, America had experienced so much loss that a few things were bound to slip through the cracks, never to be grieved over by families or historians. But there's one small loss, mostly unmourned, that we still have the power to reclaim. I'm talking, of course, about the toothbrush moustache, the bushy tuft of hair directly that sits directly beneath the nose. It's also known as the Chaplin moustache, or The Tramp if you're feeling nasty. And of course, it's also known as the moustache worn by Hitler as he declared war on the world and carried out the most horrific genocides of the 20th century.

This once respected little tuft of facial hair, the moustache's classy answer to the soul patch, has fallen drastically out of favor in the west. Of course, we have Hitler to thank for this, because now no one can sport this lean lip buddy without people comparing them to history's greatest monster. In simple terms, folks, that ain't right. Why should we all be denied the option of free choice in facial hair just because it was worn by a power mad mass murderer? It's enough to ma you wonder just who really won WWII. Because until we, as a society, as a nation, take back the moustache that is rightfully ours, we haven't really beaten the Nazis.

So I'm calling for a mass return to the Toothbrush Moustache. If anyone gives you a line about wearing a Hitler 'stache, you just tell them that, actually, it was a Chaplin first, and then ask if they have any problem with one of Hollywood's most gifted early filmmakers and comic actors. Almost no one does. Hitler took it from us, and damn it, it's time for all Americans regardless of race, color, creed or political affiliation, to stand up and take back what's theirs.

One the other side of the world, but remaining in the "Tyrannical Mass Murderers with Notable Facial Hair", Josef Stalin has been moved from the most popular Russian in history to only the 12th, after an adjustment of the voting system by executives in charge of the poll, taken for the upcoming Russian history TV show "The Name of Russia". Which is better, but the fact that I guy responsible for the mass extermination and starvation of countless civilians under his rule still makes your Twelve Best Historical Figures list still says something a bit disheartening for the state of contemporary Russia.